UnderUsed Majors III Discussion Thread

it's a thug life

Welcome, Smogon, to the third iteration of UU Majors! We're returning to an older format of UU Majors, but with a few changes that will make it run smoother. UU Majors is an annual UU Circuit Tour where you can test your mettle against the top players in the community. Unlike most elimination tours, where your opponent is a matter of chance, UU Majors ensures that every participant plays a broad swath of the tier's playerbase as you fight your way to the top.

The tournament is divided into two stages - a round-robin qualifier and a single elimination bracket. During Stage 1, players will be divided into pools, where they will play every other member of the pool in a best-of-one round robin. Pool leaders will be selected by the tournament hosts to ensure that each pool is fair. The pools will be smaller than our first iteration of UU majors. The number of pools will depend on the amount of signups. More details will be included in the signup thread.

At the end of Stage 1, each player will be ranked within his or her pool. A certain amount of players of each pool will advance to Stage 2, where they will be entered into a Single Elimination bracket. The winner will be awarded UU Circuit Points to be entered into the UU Championships. The amount of players from each pool that will advance to stage two will be announced in the signups thread.

Expect this tour to deliver many great matches between the top UU players in the community, and I'm sure there will be some surprise packages as well with the atypical format. I'm sure you're all, like us, excited to see how this tournament pans out! Good luck to all the participants :)

Banned deucer.

I have a proposal. Not sure if this is the right place to post, in that case just remove it.

I would like that from the moment UU majors begin and until its finished that all the matches are played the way the tier is now. By that I mean potential drops will be illegal throughout the duration of the tour. In my personal experience sudden drops in the middle of tourneys can just fuck you over completely. For example the venusaur drop during grand slam. What it does is put people who have busy lives at a severe disadvantage. Suddenly you have to build three functional new teams within a week so you can play your opponent before the deadline. Which is impossible if you have other irl stuff to do.

Since I probs wont have any support for this proposal, what could also work for the future, is to always try to time tourneys so that they always start 2-3 weeks after the last tier shift. That way new drops can be assessed in the course of those 2-3 weeks, and after that the tourney can run its course over the next two months. (iirc tier shifts are every 3 months?)

sleep is the cousin of death

I have a proposal. Not sure if this is the right place to post, in that case just remove it.

I would like that from the moment UU majors begin and until its finished that all the matches are played the way the tier is now. By that I mean potential drops will be illegal throughout the duration of the tour. In my personal experience sudden drops in the middle of tourneys can just fuck you over completely. For example the venusaur drop during grand slam. What it does is put people who have busy lives at a severe disadvantage. Suddenly you have to build three functional new teams within a week so you can play your opponent before the deadline. Which is impossible if you have other irl stuff to do.

Since I probs wont have any support for this proposal, what could also work for the future, is to always try to time tourneys so that they always start 2-3 weeks after the last tier shift. That way new drops can be assessed in the course of those 2-3 weeks, and after that the tourney can run its course over the next two months. (iirc tier shifts are every 3 months?)

The issue is that for a long tour like UU open, if the shifts occurred say during the second round, by the end of it you wouldn't be playing a metagame that's reflective of the current tier at all, which sucks. Not to mention there's playoffs for the entire Grand Slam tournament that's gonna feature UU as well. The same goes with UU majors; if the tournament officially starts before the tier shifts happen, then tier shifts will minimally not be used in games during that phase/round. After that, it's up to the discretion of the TLs to decide if more time is necessary for the userbase to adapt. There's no sense in arbitrarily waiting for the tour to end if it's not needed.

For the second part where you suggested timing tournaments, I'd like that but the biggest hole there is that we don't ever know when exactly tier shifts occur. We know the big changes happen every 3 months, but the exact date solely depends on when Antar gets them done, which historically has been anytime between the first week of the month to towards the end. Tournament starting dates are set in advance, so unless we know for sure when usage stats drop, this isn't feasible. Delaying one tournament means possibly delaying other tournaments for an unknown period of time as well.

Banned deucer.

The three potential drops as far as I know is Zeraora, Mlatios and Latios. All of which are potentially very problematic and suspect worthy. I get your point about the tournament not reflecting the current metagame. But in the case that these three threats drop and are banned few weeks later, isnt it kind of pointless to let them be legal in majors during their brief stay in the tier? Wouldnt it be better to let them be used in tournaments after its decided wether they are broken or not?

Id like it if we had a suspect ladder simultaneously as majors is going on and then legalize the drops depending on the result of the suspect test. That leaves more time for players to familiarize themselves with the new drops and for a new meta to stabilize.

I am sure council will come up with a decision which will make sure that majors goes as smoothly as possible if these drops do happen. And this month is not the big drops month so these drops might not even happen.